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Establishing Thought Leadership in Southeast Asia’s Logistics Part 1: On Call with Janio Asia co-founder and Head of Marketing Nathaniel Yim
In a time when a logistics’ company’s credibility is based on the size of your fleet, how do you market your asset-light company?
In part 1 of Insignia Venture’s On Call, Paulo Joquino speaks with Nathaniel Yim, then Head of Marketing of Janio Asia on how Janio was founded and the foundations of its marketing and brand strategy, specifically:
- Janio’s founding story
- Janio’s mission
- How Janio’s brand was built
- The core of Janio’s SEO and content strategy
- Community engagement: How Janio leveraged its ecoystem for brand building
You can also listen to this on Insignia Venture’s website.
Check out the transcript below:
Paulo (Q): Welcome everyone to On Call with Insignia, where we go on call with Southeast Asia's emerging technology startup leaders and investors.
In this episode, I'm glad to be on call with Nathaniel Lim, co-founder and head of marketing at Janio Asia to talk about the role of marketing and content strategy for cross-border logistics technology platform like Janio.
So previously, we had on our show, Janio COO, Ali and previously as well, we've had another marketing leader from our portfolio, Manisha.
Glad to have another founder from Janio and also a marketing leader as well. So just a little bit on Nathaniel: He joined the founding team at Janio in 2018 after graduating and pursuing several branding and marketing internships at consulting firms the year prior.
He has since taken the lead of Janio's marketing efforts across Southeast Asia, building the marketing team and Janio brand from scratch, covering areas like PR, lead generation, website development, account-based marketing, sales enablement, SEO, as well as representing the company at public speaking engagements and podcasts like this one for branding amongst others.
So welcome to the show Nathaniel.
N: Thank you. Thanks for having me. Good to be here.
Q: Right. Yeah. So just to start things off, I would like to get to know how you ended up becoming a founder, a co-founder of Janio and coming from a marketing background and what drew you to work in a logistics tech startup?
N: Okay. It's an interesting question. Normally the answer that I give has to be quite interesting for most people as well. So I fell into it by chance, actually. My co-founder and CEO, Junkai, is my classmate from university.
So I've known him for about seven or so years now. Basically at the time when we started the company, I had just graduated about a month after graduation and I was in between interviews, getting a couple of offers and then just thinking about what to do to start of my career and just at the time, Junkai just messaged me one day and he was like, hey man, do you want to start a company with me? And it actually went something like that.
So I thought, okay, you know what, I'll just hear you out and hear what you got to say. So I met him and we spoke about it and the more we talked about it, the more I realized like, oh, this is actually a huge opportunity, a once in a lifetime opportunity.
If I say no, he will never come by again. And I haven't taken any offers yet. So it was really at the point in time where we had this conversation and that's how we got started.
So I mean, I did some of my own research into logistics. I realized that, okay, this is a huge industry and there's so much more to do in the region, especially. And as a consumer of e-commerce, I've seen some of the experience rather some of the issues that come about with logistics when we're talking about cross-border logistics, especially when deliveries get missing or delayed and all that.
So I thought, okay, since I mean, this is a very real problem that I face as a consumer, why don't I give a stab at it and try to solve it as a service provider. So that was sort of like how I got to become a founder of the company and why logistics was something that drew me. Yeah.
Q: So prior to Junkai's invitation to join the founding team, you had no solid intention of joining a startup per se, right?
N: Yeah. I mean, I was looking more at like perhaps MNCs or at least e-commerce companies that have been around for a while, but not so much of a brand new startup or even starting up my own company. Right.
Q: And it's been a pretty interesting past two years for you and you came into it really from a consumer perspective, right? And earlier I mentioned that you helped build the Janio brand from scratch. So coming from a consumer perspective, what was the thought process behind building the Janio brand?
N: Okay. So back then when I started this, logistics to me was just taking something from point A and putting it at point B. If you strip it down to its bare essence, that's really what it is. But the process of doing that is a lot more complicated than just moving something along a straight line.
So when we started it, I mean, from the beginning, we knew that we were focusing more on businesses rather than end consumers, at least not at the beginning. So it was more of, okay, how do I make this company interesting, how do I market moving a parcel from A to B in a sexy way that can work for people in the industry, especially since we are a brand new company, nobody has heard of us. I mean, even this name, Janio, is a made-up word that just came into existence in February of 2018.
So how do you then head on against the incumbents of people who have been in the industry for decades and come across as credible? So I guess really the thought process was how do I firstly get myself in front of the audience that I'm looking at in a cost effective way?
Because when you're a brand new startup, you don't have the same kind of million-dollar budgets that incumbents would have. And how do I come across as credible enough for people to begin the shipping process with us since we were brand new and we are more of a platform rather than a traditional asset player.
So it's tricky when you don't have your own expensive fleets of vans or warehouses or planes that some of the other players do because many of these merchants and shippers will be asking like okay so where are your vans, where are your bikes, where are all this right but because we are a platform and at the beginning we basically really had nothing how do I then show that I have what it takes I can do what is required to service these clients needs.
So it was really about getting the correct awareness and then focusing on the credibility and that was the key. I guess it's still is a key requirement for marketing and building the brand. Right.
Q: I think it's interesting that you said that you really wanted to build that credibility, right? Especially since you guys were just starting up this company and most of the founders were just getting into the logistics sector and I think part of that building credibility.
One thing that I noticed from Jano's marketing is that you do a lot of these reports, guides, case studies, and you know, just all around content and sharing information about the how to's for e-commerce and cross border trade. So I think our listeners would be interested to know how this content strategy concretely impacts the business. Maybe you can share some examples of linking the content that you guys do to build that credibility and then how it impacts your clients.
N: So at the beginning, we identified quite early on that this lack of a physical footprint would need to be dealt with in a different kind of way compared to what most of the logistics players do when it comes to marketing.
So to make up for this lack of physical footprint, our digital footprint needs to be strong enough. And it made sense because e-commerce players were our initial focus. They're still a big focus for us. So e-commerce players would be online anyway. So we realized what that would mean is people need to find us when they are searching for solutions, searching for doing research or anything related to e-commerce and logistics.
So our SEO needed to be strong, which means we need to have a well-built website with the correct type of content and needs to be optimized for search. So content marketing then was a very natural choice of key initiative that we've embarked on and is still a big focus for us because content marketing done well, not only will it help you to be found with people's search because they are ranking high enough, it also helps to create credibility because the quality of the content when people are reading on your page can make or break their impression of you as a service provider.
So we decided that since we are focused on servicing Asia and we are looking at how e-commerce companies can do cross-border shipping, so e-commerce cross-border in ServiceAsia, those were, I would say, our key themes when it came to content.
So if you look at our website and you would see there's a lot of content on these main topics, often they overlap so you end up talking about cross-border e-commerce in maybe a specific country.
So these were insights which back when we started, you wouldn't really find a lot of this unless you paid like a sum of money for a specialist report.
So what we wanted to do was to leverage the data that we had, the connections and I would say the network that we had, the many partnerships throughout the countries and also with our own interactions with clients to form our own view of what's going on in these markets and then turn that into some kind of meaningful resource that our clients and potential clients could tap into because it helps with awareness and being found and establishing credibility but to our own clients it's also a big help to them to understand and make sense of the markets that they are in because even for many of these clients they might not have a very big in-house research team or strategy team.
So how they get their opinions and views on what the market is doing, where it's hidden comes from the secondary materials that they read. In this case, that would be the content that we develop. So that's how our articles gives us the views and the credibility and helps evaluate the clients.
Some of the bigger bucket items I would say would be things like eBooks or case studies, these tend to be a lot more expensive and include things like interviews with our clients and partners and other types of research such as primary surveys that we conduct and whatnot. So they tend to be a lot more detailed and in-depth on specific themes such as maybe a specific country and an overview of e-commerce there or perhaps even a specific vertical or specific season during e-commerce in the region.
So these are meant to really help people go in-depth and even help to form an opinion. Beyond just like a thousand-word article, now you have maybe a 50-page report that can help you to prepare better for let's say Hari Raya, Ramadan, e-commerce season, and the various markets, because that's a very big thing in this market.
So it also helps us in generating leads. So that's where we start to see like really concrete results in driving commercial success, because these e-books, case studies, the standard practice in B2B marketing is to put this behind what they will call a gain. So it's a (piece of) gated content where people need to sign up for it, provide some data about themselves, the contact details, et cetera, and then they'll be able to download it for free.
So when we get their details, there are some fields in the form that they fill up that would help us understand what are their interests, how we can better help them in their logistics requirements. So when these leads come in, then we work with the sales team to follow up with these leads, engage them and in so doing, it helps to set better context for sales discussion, facilitates the commercial process a bit better. So I would say content gets awareness, it generates leads. It also helps to retain clients and keep them happy. Right. So it really does a lot in terms of driving Janio’s commercial success.
Q: Do you have any, in terms of like generating leads, do you have any specific examples that come to mind or stories from past clients?
Yeah. So perhaps without naming a name, we do have quite a lot of clients from overseas markets, especially outside of Southeast Asia, looking to expand their knowledge and their presence in the markets, folks in the UK or Australia, even some of these markets, which we are further away from.
So their ability to make sense of what's going on is not as expensive as someone who is in the market. So for many of these overseas companies, some of them include even MNCs that carry many household brand names. When they find our materials, especially our eBooks and case studies, they tend to start there and it provides a great help for them in terms of understanding this market that they are trying to expand to or expand in. So that helps us to firstly find out that these people are interested.
And we also know that these are some of the topics that are top of their minds. So when we engage them, we are able to not just talk about the logistics aspect of e-commerce, but we can also talk about market entry strategies or how we can help facilitate conversations with other ecosystem players.
So those are some ways I would say, especially for rest of all markets, which do not have that kind of footprint in this market is particularly useful. I would say. Right. I think that's a really interesting use case for the content, especially as it aligns with what Janio does as a platform - helping all of these companies outside of Southeast Asia get into the logistics lanes within the region.
Q: And one thing that you mentioned about how you approach this content strategy is that you really make use of all these information that comes from Janio's network of partners, right.
And that reminds me of - in the previous podcast with Manisha - where she said that everybody in the company should be marketing savvy. Everybody should be able to represent the brand. And I think that's something that Janio is able to do very well as well.
So what's your approach when it comes to driving marketing company-wide, you know, making it sort of like a company effort or even driving it beyond the company and, you know, getting ecosystem network partners involved as well.
N: So definitely agree with you. Everybody in the company should be able to help represent the brand and also should be involved in developing the brand.
So internally within the company, there are several ways in which other stakeholders can be involved. So firstly would be, I think that the more common way they're involved with marketing and content would be to provide insights into various aspects of logistics and e-commerce.
So for example, our ops team, they are the guys who facilitate the flows of the physical products, they work with the network partners. So they're the most in tune with what's really happening on the ground when it comes to the operational side of things. So we get their insights and their inputs when it comes to our content and our materials, which concern the operational side of things.
So if you see our articles that talk about air freight from certain countries, this country to that country, and how it's done, basically that's developed with the help of somebody from operations. If you look at something that is more on, I would say the tech or product side of things, it talks about how perhaps data can help with improving the state of e-commerce or e-commerce logistics that would be provided by somebody in the product or tech teams, because they are the ones who are developing the software and the integrations and whatnot that are required to optimize and improve on what's happening in the industry. So everything has a special part to play.
And of course, the sales team, they're the ones to speak to the clients directly. So they have the best knowledge of what are the pain points, what are the things that people look out for, how expectations are changing, what are the key questions on the minds of the clients.
So this also helps to inform our content strategy, our marketing strategy, like what are the materials, the type of topics we can write on, what are the type of materials that we need to develop, what do our materials need to answer, right?
So everybody provides the inputs that help shape the marketing strategy or the marketing content in one way or another.
Q: Right, and how about your partners in Jano's ecosystem, how do they also get involved in, or how are they engaged in terms of your marketing strategy?
N: Okay, so many of the partners in our ecosystem, beyond just the logistics partners, of course, we do work with a number of other e-commerce enablers or market-based players and other business related service providers, basically collectively cover all the different areas of business and e-commerce.
So every partner that we have brings a unique perspective or a unique set of services that they can provide to the shared clients that we have. So usually what we try to do is we look at how we can leverage each other's capabilities and our insights and come up with something that is a bit more comprehensive.
So an example of such an initiative that we did would be a conference that we did back in 2019 with some of our ecosystem partners. So we worked with market-based players, logistics players that cover other areas of the supply chain, even with channel management systems companies to provide insights to e-commerce merchants, e-commerce merchants being our audience or shared audience and how they can tap into all these different areas to improve the e-commerce business. So that would be one very tangible way that we get involved with our partners and work together to come up with something useful and valuable for our merchants.
Q: Right, right. And I think those are really great initiatives, especially as it adds to the larger ecosystem of supply chain management and cross-border logistics. And that concludes the first part of our two-part conversation with Nathaniel Yim. For part two we talk about best practices, technical tips and misconceptions when it comes to handling B2B marketing and PR.
So to all our listeners, stay on the line and connect with us. Follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever you listen to your podcasts. Until our next call, this has been On Call with Insignia Ventures.
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